Real Love. It's not what the movies say it is.

One time when I was like 11 years old my friend and I were supposed to go over to her aunts house to swim, well my friend got in trouble for something I don't remember, and we couldn't go. So I went home and cried because now I didn't know what to do that afternoon because my friend couldn't play with me and my dad told me "You just depend on her too much." and I asked him what he meant and he said that I needed to learn to have fun on my own too. For some reason this statement stuck in my head, and although I didn't do much about it then, I think about it often now. I don't want to be dependent on other people.

I've had a few relationships with guys where I was very dependent on them, especially emotionally. Those relationships always ended badly... I dated a guy for a year and a half, and didn't even want to be with him anymore for the last half of the relationship, but didn't know what I would do with myself if I didn't have him. It took him going away for a month for me to realize I would be just fine without him. I was still devastated by the break up and it was very emotionally tolling and complicated for me. I vowed to never have that kind of relationship ever again. The kind where I had to speak to them every second of every day, see them as often as possible, and constantly have them reinforcing my worth as a person. NEVER AGAIN.

So in my attempt to not have a clingy, dependent relationship, I found myself in a short series of very bad relationships, just this time, it was the opposite extreme. I refused to emotionally invest myself in any way whatsoever, but to try to make up for it, I gave them whatever I could physically and refused to commit. Most of these flings lasted only a few weeks, if that, and when it would go down the drain, I wouldn't even shed a tear. Every single one of them would go back to their clingy, annoying exgirlfriend that they always had complained about, which now I realize is because I wasn't giving them the emotional food they craved.

I have found myself on both extremes of the spectrum, and neither one is pleasant. So what is a good balance though? What is the difference between needing to be together every moment of every day, and just enjoying eachothers company? What causes a realtionship to be hurtful rather than helping? What is real love?

I think the world has the idea of love all wrong. There is this stereotype of love, that it is this romantic, desperate longing for someone, where all you do is think about them and want to be with them, and there is nothing more important than that person. The kind of love where people give up anything and everything just to be together. The whole "can't eat, can't sleep, reach for the stars, world series kind of stuff" (It Takes Two).

I am one of the few lucky kids these days who has parents who are still married, and they are a fantastic example to me of what real love is like. They aren't perfect, but they accept each other in their imperfectons and help build each other. I have never heard them have a yelling or screaming fight, yes I have heard them have disagreements, but they handle it like adults and talk it out and make compromises. They really love each other. They love to be together, and they love their family. They make each other so happy, but it isn't destructive.

Real love isn't needing somebody. But it is wanting somebody. You can go on with life without them, but if they are around, it makes it just that much better. It is caring about someone so much that you want to be better for them. They are your best friend, the person you turn to in challenges, and who you can be completely yourself around.

I've quoted Mrs. Snell before, and that time I was disagreeing with some of her comments, but this time I am going agree with her.  She has an article about Chemistry in a relationship. She talks about how in some relationships there are a lot of highs and lows, and the highs seem so much higher just because the lows are so low. In a good relationship there shouldn't be any extreme lows. Not that a relationship won't have its challenges, but there shouldn't be feelings of abandonment and rejection. A persons self worth should not be tied into the relationship.
(http://itsyourtechnique.com/2010/06/22/chemisty-what-is-it-how-do-i-recognize-it-and-how-important-is-it/)

Maybe I'm not one to say what real love is. I'm not married or in a relationship, or even close to being in one. But I have had my fair share of bad relationships and I've done plenty of observing. And I want to marry a guy that I love, but only if it's real love. The best friend, last forever, trusting and compromising kind of stuff.